Consuming the Tangible

“Missing the bus” on something is such a stupid saying. The whole point of buses is they keep arriving, right on schedule (or thereabouts, I’m not about to try and convince you otherwise). You can ALWAYS get on the bus; you might miss the one everyone else got on, but guess what? The next one to arrive can take you to the same place. I kept thinking of that as I listened to Milo Goes to College, the template for the thousands of pop-punk bands birthed in its aftermath. This was my first experience with the Descendents, and it’s interesting to see how the application of that saying impacts a 52-year-old dude listening to an 80s punk/hardcore record for the first time. I really like all of it, love some of it, but admit that getting on the bus this late in the game dilutes the electricity an album like this would impart to a teenager less familiar with the form.

To be clear: musically Milo Goes to College is great. The bass – so important to hardcore and punk at the time – is really rumbly and up front in the mix, bassist Tony Lombardo is a real standout. Guitarist Frank Navetta and drummer Bill Stevenson lock in beautifully, allowing Lombardo to not only anchor the band’s sound with his low end, but also giving him the freedom to wander all over the tracks, with runs you’d find more typically on a fusion record.

That leaves vocalist Milo Aukerman, one of the original punk/PhD guys. The album is titled and dedicated to Aukerman, who was leaving for college at the time, eventually earning his degree in molecular biology. His teenage, petulant sneer of a delivery might be the biggest influence on the scene: I can hear the same rhythms and cadences from Rancid on …And Out Come the Wolves and other records that took the formula and ran with it. Listening to songs like “Suburban Homes” and “I’m Not a Punk” has a vibrancy that manages to penetrate my old bones and give a glimpse as to how I might have felt discovering this when I was a disaffected teen.

Other songs don’t fare as well, particularly in the lyrics department. One of the things hitting me when I listen to Milo Goes to College is just how familiar and real the homophobic lyrics on something like “I’m Not a Loser” sound. It’s supremely embarrassing to read now — but also, man… I remember those feelings, unexpressed but thought because no matter how much you may have tried, that was simply the language of the day. By contrast, I identify completely with the stilted, furious outburst at the heart of something like “Parents,” where it’s so over the top you get the sense of the real frustration that’s pushing those words over the top of youthful drama.

To bring it back to the “missing the bus” opening, I obviously didn’t miss the bus – here I am discovering the joy of the Descendents for the first time. But maybe there’s some truth hidden in the cracks in the cliché; maybe the late pickup and the traffic trying to get to this specific destination changed me.

Time changes everybody, I guess.